While The World Burns
by memories-child
Summary: If you could, would you change a single thing?


They have travelled far together, these two partners, lovers, friends. They have travelled together in spirit and in actuality, to the ends of the world and the closeness of a breath. They have travelled the lengths of the country, down countless highways and empty one-track roads; travelled the minute distances between thought and touch, and through it all have been the other's constant, touchstone. Now, at the end of the world, they stand together, hand clutched in outstretched hand, outlined in fire and red, still facing the world as one.

"Remember," she says "Remember..."

He turns to her, seeing their past reflected in her eyes, and smiles and tells her of course he does.

He remembers. Remembers every last detail of the time they have spent together and he wishes he could tell her how much it - she - means to him.

"Would you change any of it?" she asks. "If you could, would you - "

He thinks of the day her father died; of marvelling at how vulnerable she was, yet how strong she can be. He remembers her cancer, wondering if he would lose her and how he would go on; remembers a dark forest floor and talk of sleeping bags. He smiles at the memory of presents on Christmas Eve, the thwack of a baseball curving towards the sky. It has always been him and her, her and him; together against the world. And would he change any of it, if he could?

"Not a single day," is his reply and it is true, so true. "The only regret I have is not realising sooner how much I loved you."

And as the world burns he tells her what he remembers, and what he wishes had been so. The sky revolves, and he talks, and they stand, hand in hand. Remembering.

****

He calls her Dana. Lying in his hospital bed the name slips out, softer than the Scully that normally trips off his tongue.

If she notices the slip she says nothing. Caught in the grief that is still so fresh after her father's death, and the promises she will never find out if Boggs would have kept, she sinks into his arms as though he is her only safe port in a world of storms.

She tells him of holidays spent on naval bases with her father, the trees that were taken down the day after Christmas and the Easter egg hunts that occupied the whole of Easter Sunday.

She laughs as she tells him of the time she and Charlie snuck out of the base and made their way to the top of the nearest dune ("Only half a mile away," she says, "A mile at most").

Four years older than her he'd got hold of a joint and needed a partner in crime.

"Dad would have killed us if he'd ever found out," and now she's laughing with the memory. "I was terrified he or Mom would wake up and find us out of our beds, call out the whole base to come looking for us and find us stoned, staring up at the stars and giggling."

Listening to her stories he is reminded of his own sister, Samantha. Would they have been the same, growing up? Would they have been partners in crime or exchanged cursory words in passing, the archetypal older brother/younger sister? He misses her so much and now, with Scully, he feels as though he's found the friend he has been looking for so long.

Now, she faces him in his hospital bed and the lines of loss on her face as she tries to explain away the messages from her father are immeasurable. He longs to reach out to her, to tell her that he knows, he knows, how she feels. To tell her that it's okay to grieve, to feel the sadness welling up in her chest, to seek comfort from the people she loves. Instead, he lets her talk, lets her find solace in science and only wishes he could help her to believe.

"I was considering Boggs. If he knew that I was your partner, he could have found out everything he knew about me. About my father..."

"Scully."

"_Beyond the Sea_ was playing at my parents' wedding. Visions of deceased loved ones are a common psychological phenomena. If he knew that my father had..."

"Dana. After all you've seen, after all the evidence, why can't you believe?"

"I'm afraid. I'm afraid to believe."

"You couldn't face that fear? Even if it meant never knowing what your father wanted to tell you?"

**"**But I do know."

**"**How?"

"He was my father."

Her acceptance of the truth seems so simple to him; so obvious. He wonders why he's never been able to feel the same; when his search for the truth became so complicated.

_He was my father. _With those few words he understands. And the moment existing is nothing more than this - surrounded by wires and machines, wanting nothing more than to take her in his arms: the first time he calls her Dana; the first time he realises that he loves her.

****

For weeks afterward she wakes in the middle of the night, heart pounding. She is back in that closet, bound and gagged, but this time there is no Mulder to burst in, gun drawn, at the end. This time she is on her own and Pfaster comes closer and closer, the knife in his hand reflecting the moonlight that shines through the bathroom window. She knows she is going to die.

She switches on the bedside lamp and tries to forget that night.

"I'm fine, Mulder," she had said, refusing to look into his eyes, and only when he titled her chin upwards, his fingers tender and gentle, had she broken down. He had held her in his arms as she wept, the weight of his relief strong on her shoulders, his fingers tangled in her hair, and she realised that Mulder was where she felt safe.

The memory both frightens and electrifies her. He is her partner but the things that have seen and experienced together have turned him into much, much more than that. She isn't sure, yet, how she feels about it.

The phone rings, startling her; the harsh ringing making her heat beat faster, and she reaches instinctively for her gun. She consider letting it ring, letting the machine get it, but the thought of hearing those words (_you can't hide girlie girl_) tinny and loud in her bedroom (even though she knows he is in prison, safely locked behind bars) make her reach out and pick up the handset.

"Hey Scully, it's me," comes her partner's smooth voice and she is at once relived. "I figured you might not be able to sleep so…"

"I'm fine, Mulder. I - I'm fine," she replies and is surprised at how weary she sounds. "I mean, yes, I'm tired. I keep having these dreams and... But I've been exposed to a traumatic experience and even with the physical effects wearing off I'm still prone to suffer from flashbacks or nightmares and have difficulty in falling asleep. It's chemistry, Mulder. In a few weeks I'll be fine."

"Ok, Scully. I can accept that. But, uh, I have Chinese food if you want to let me in."

They settle on her couch, Chinese food in cartons before them on the table. Theirs is a comfortable silence, the video that Mulder brought with him (_The Day The Earth Stood Still_, of course - his predeliction for science fiction untempered even when he's supposed to be comforting her) muted, and the flickering light casts dancing shadows over them.

She can't quite figure out this partner of hers. She feels more at home in his company than with any man she has known and she wonders if he feels the same about her; wonders if he has thought of her the same way she has thought of him.

"I still hear him," she says to Mulder's shoulder, his head resting against hers. "All the time, wherever I am, I hear him. Will it ever stop?"

He is silent for a moment and she begins to question whether she has shared too much with him, allowed herself to be too vulnerable. She has fought to prove that she is as tough as the boys, as able as them to deal with difficult cases – as an FBI agent instead of a woman, and she wonders if he is more like the men who scorn her than she had realised.

"It will stop Scully," he replies, and his voice is low and filled with emotion.

They watch the film in silence and Scully begins to feel her eyes droop. She stifles a yawn as Mulder's arm slips around her shoulders and for the first time in long weeks she feels at peace. She curls up in his arms as his fingers tangle in her hair.

"You'll be ok," he murmurs as she drifts to sleep, and this time she believes him.

****

He sits alone in the bar, knocking back shot after shot. The bartender leaves him alone, only coming his way to pour another glassful of the sickly liquid, and for that he is grateful. He is no company for anyone tonight.

He felt his world crumbling when she told him she has cancer and he drinks to forget the look of acceptance in her eyes. He refused to believe it; refuses to believe it. Scully can't succumb to this disease, but the finality in her voice and the way she looked at him as she told him there was no hope made his hands shake, his breath freeze in his throat.

"I refuse to believe that," he had said, staring at her in shock.

"For all times I have said that to you I am as certain of this as you have ever been. I have cancer. It is a mass on the wall between my sinus and cerebrum. If it pushes into my brain statistically there is about zero chance of survival."

Her reply echoes in his mind (_zero chance of survival_), a broken record skipping again (_zero chance of survival_) and again. He realises he is disgusted with himself, sitting here nursing his sorrows in a downtown bar. He needs to focus on Scully now, not his own grief. If she is to get well he needs to find the men who did this to her and make them pay.

He slams the shot glass down on the bar and fumbles with his cell phone, pulling it from his pocket and punching a series of numbers in with shaking, stuttering fingers.

"Frohike? I need a favour."

He tears down the dark corridor, his only thought to protect her. He thinks he will collapse when he turns the corner into her room and she isn't there; his mind chases the most terrible scenarios down and then he sees her journal. He knows he shouldn't read what she has written in there, that it isn't meant for his eyes, but the thought that he might lose her without knowing what she has been feeling, lying in hospital alone, is worth the risk of her anger. He has to be with her; for better or for worse.

_Mulder, I feel you close though I know you are now pursuing your own path. For that I am grateful – more than I could ever express. I need to know you're out there if I am ever to see through this._

And this is what he has been waiting for, acknowledgment (even if tentative) that she needs him as much as he needs her.

His frustration is palpable as he searches the hospital for Scully, the words he has read in her journal fuelling his need to see her. His relief when he finds her (thank god for Byers, he thinks) is only tempered by the sorrow she feels for Penny and he waits in an uncomfortable chair for her to say goodbye to her friend.

When she emerges from the hospital room, tired and drained, he can barely stop himself from reaching for her.  
_  
_**"**I'm sorry. I know what she meant to you," he pauses. "When I came to find you, you weren't in your room I got scared that something had happened, and I read some of what you wrote."

She sighs and looks away from him. Embarrassed, he thinks, but he knows he sees something else in her expression too.

"I didn't want you to read that. I had decided to throw it out. I decided tonight that, that I'm not going to let this thing beat me. I came into this hospital able to work, and that's how I'm leaving."

He nods and wraps her in his arms, breathing her in. He longs to take her away from all of this, to care for her somewhere they don't have to worry about abductions and conspiracies; fear and illness, and he wonders how could he be so selfish to put her though this. How his search for answers could be more important than the woman he has come to love.

"The truth will save you Scully. I think it will save both of us."

And he knows that he can't live without her, will fight this damn cancer if it's the last thing he does, because losing her is the most fearsome of all truths.

****

The woods are cold and dank, their breath misting in the foggy air. The slightest rustle of leaves sends her reaching for her gun, he notices, senses on high alert for anything that could threaten them. They need a fire, she tells him; he needs to keep warm but he is unsure of how long she can go on keeping watch for the two of them, and the sticks she uses to build the fire are damp, the rocks cutting her palms into shards of broken skin. She struggles to keep her exhaustion from him, not wanting him to carry her worry, and how weary she sounds makes his heart ache.

"Mulder, you need to keep warm. Your body's still in shock."

He struggles closer to her, wrapping his body against hers and feels her shivers at his proximity. Even through layers of thick winter clothing he is aware of her body and the feelings it awakens in him.

"I was told once that the best way to regenerate body heat was to crawl naked into a sleeping bag with some body else who's already naked." He murmurs the words groggily, hoping she will pull him closer, stroke his forehead, kiss his hair.

Instead she retreats to the comfortable, to the sarcastic; the acerbic comments that, really, are her way of telling him how much he means to her. "Well, maybe if it rains sleeping bags, you'll get lucky."

He laughs, and the movement hurts his shoulder. He watches as she tries to take apart a bullet from her gun to light their fire, and when the gunpowder flashes out with a bang she leans back against the log, tired and disheartened.

**"**I don't wanna wrestle," he complains as she tries to pull him onto her lap and she suppresses a laugh, though whether it's because he makes her laugh or because the reality of their situation is slowly sinking in he doesn't know.

"One of us has got to stay awake, Scully."

"You sleep, Mulder."

"If you get tired, you wake me."

"I'm not going to get tired."

He worries that she will get tired, will fall asleep among the cold leaves and leave them both easy targets for the moth men prowling the woods.

"Why don't you sing something."

"No, Mulder."

"Well, if you sing something, I'll know you're awake."

"Mulder, you don't want me to sing. I can't carry a tune."

"It doesn't matter. Just sing anything."

And so she sings, the refrain of a song she was sung as a child echoing through the dark woods, as he drifts to sleep.

** "**Joy .... to the world. All the boys and girls. Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea. Joy to you and me."

When he wakes up it is cold, his head resting on the damp forest floor. He pushes himself up, groaning at the wound in his shoulder, and his stomach drops as he realises he is alone.

"Scully," his voice echoes through the night air.

No answer. He rises to his feet, grimacing in pain and fighting to keep the panic down.

"Scully!" Louder this time, more urgent.

Silence, and then (through the black where the monsters of his imagination have torn her apart a thousand times) he hears her voice.

"Over here Mulder," and he relaxes as he hears her voice.

"Scully? Where are you? What's going on?"

She doesn't answer and he tries to peer through the trees, straining to see where Scully is. The sounds of something being dragged and bumped along the moss carpeted floor float on the air towards him and he wonders what she's doing.

Suddenly she is there, looming out of the trees, and his eyes drop to her hands as she wipes them on her damp and muddy trousers.

"I've found a dry patch of ground Mulder, and some undergrowth that I think might keep us warm," she tells him, and he follows her through the forest to a small rise at the foot of a tree. There sits a rickety tent of wood covered with branches and moss, and the look on Scully's face as he surveys their quarters is enough to make up for the rocky ground and dripping leaves.

"Does this mean I get to crawl naked into something resembling a sleeping bag with somebody else who's already naked then, Scully?" he queries, unable to keep the laughter from his voice.

"Unless you want to lie on the cold ground while I get nice and warm Mulder, I suggest you shut up and help me drag this branch over there."

Together (he wounded, she cold, but both happy) they struggle with the foliage, arms and legs twisting around each other as they pull and drag and manoeuvre the twigs and moss onto the most comfortable part of the forest floor.

"Isn't this better than building towers out of office furniture?" he asks and Scully, cold and out of breath, laughs.

"Looks like I got lucky after all." He smiles at her, and within minutes they are curled in the warmth of the undergrowth, their clothes scattered over the forest floor.

****

The black and white film flickers, casting shapeless shadows over the floor, the wall, his shuttered face. He is trying not to think of their evening, of the eerie house and its haunted inhabitants, and is failing. He can't quite bring himself to admit that Maurice's words have left an uneasy impression on him. He is single-minded (he'd even admit to being a bit obsessed, at times) but surely people, surely Scully, can't think he's descending in total breakdown? And the less said about paramasturbatory illusions the better. On the flickering television, Scrooge opens his windows to a new world. Mulder wishes he could be that lucky.

A knocking startles him and for a moment he wonders if the film has somehow invaded his apartment, if this evening can get any stranger and then he realises it's the door.

"I, uh, I couldn't sleep. I was, um -" She refuses to look at him, staring instead at the floor and he wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his mercilessly un-Christmassy apartment.

"Aren't you supposed to be opening Christmas gifts with your family?"

"Mulder..." she stops to face him and he sees how much their night's adventure has been weighing on her, "None of that really happened out there tonight. That was all in our heads, right?"

"I-it must have been."

"Mmm," she looks relieved and he is glad that he has let this lie slip out tonight. "Not that, uh, my only joy in life is proving you wrong."

"When have you proved me wrong?"

"Well... Why else would you want me out there with you?"

"You didn't want to be there?"

He stares at Scully, hoping that she will prove him wrong but she doesn't answer.

"Oh, that's, um... That's self-righteous and narcissistic of me to say, isn't it?"

"No, I mean. Maybe I did want to be out there with you."

With this confession his spirits lift a little and he thinks that his instincts were right. Christmas Eve or not, Scully wanted to be there with him, would have followed him even if he hadn't taken her keys (though this is one thing he thinks she would be better off not knowing, not when she has made her way across the snowy city needing reasons for the night's events) and he loves her for it.

"Now, um... I know we said that we weren't going to exchange gifts but, uh, I got you a little something."

With a shy smile, he holds out a small, wrapped present.

"Mulder..." And the way she says his name as she smiles at him lights up his night.

"Well, I got you a little something, too."

She holds out a likewise wrapped presents and he chuckles, pleased that they have broken the no presents promise they made to each other.

Sharing a laugh and an exchange of looks they retreat to his couch as he mutes the sound of Scrooge's joy (after all, who needs the ghost of Christmas past to remind him of how lucky he is when he has Scully sitting next to him). This is the first present he has had off Scully, the first he has given her (not counting the Apollo 11 keyring that reminded him of his childhood) and he had struggled to find something he thought she would like. Six years together, spent chasing aliens, battling deadly diseases and attempting to foil a government conspiracy has made it surprisingly difficult to buy something for his partner, and he hopes she will be pleased with what he's bought.

But enough of Scully's present , he thinks, what could she have possibly found for him? Feeling the rough edges of a video his interest grows; new footage of the Roswell autopsy, a new video to add to the collection of videos in the bottom drawer that definitely aren't his? The paper falls to the floor and he begins to smile.

Superstars of the Superbowl.

"You like it?" she asks and he hears the doubt in her voice as he turns to her, smiling.

"I like it."

"Believe it or not Mulder, I spent days watching that in the hospital. It reminded me of you, and I guess I needed to have that then. To know that you were with me."

He wraps his arms around her and places a delicate kiss on her golden hair.

"Stay with me, Scully," he says and he doesn't just mean now, tonight; he means always, forever. He has carried her in his heart for so long and he can't imagine being without her, and while the words trip unthinking off his tongue for once, it seems, he's said the right thing.

They spend the night curled together in Mulder's bed while outside the snow drifts down and piles against the door and the windows, blanketing the world in white.

****

Swinging the bat, connecting ash wood with horse hide, is his way of not thinking about whether or not she'll come tonight. Unlikely as it is that Scully will have any other plans, her comments about his spending time in their dank basement office on a sunny Saturday that morning have struck a chord and he is unsure whether she meant they needed to get out in the sun together, or apart.

"So, uh, I get this message marked urgent on my answering service from one Fox Mantle," her voice rings out across the pitch, and his swinging the bat, connecting ash wood with horse hide, is his way of not thinking about how pleased he is that she is here.

She settles against the chain link fence and watches him as he swings. He lets her words wash over him, pleased that she is there, that she had no other plans, that she wants to spend the evening playing baseball with him. This is where they need to be tonight, the two of them. If he is to believe Arthur's tale, that love can make a man shapeshift; that an alien can become a man because of love for a game, then surely he can turn into something other than a man for her. Surely he can turn into the man that she'd want to spend the rest of her life with.

"Get over here, Scully," he calls, needing her next to him, needing to feel the warmth of her skin and the light brush of her hair as he teaches her how to play. She pushes herself off the fence and makes her way over to him. He knows she is rolling her eyes in that so Scully way of hers (years of partnership have given him some insight into the way she acts) and is pleased that some things, at least, never change.

She slides her fingers over his as she takes the bat and he wraps his arms around her, her small hands resting between his. Her head is at chin height and he can smell the shampoo she's used on her hair as he breathes in. The bat shifts in her hands and he shifts his weight, the feel of Scully in his arms tonight sending shivers through him, making him lose his balance.

"This my birthday present, Mulder?" she queries, eyebrows raised. "You shouldn't have," but the tone of her voice gives her away and she leans back into him, nestled against his chest, their hands warm together on the piece of ash.

Scully in his arms is all he can think of and he mutters some inane response. He realises that he is still talking, though he has no idea what he is saying, is just happy that it makes Scully laugh. He slides his hands to her hips and even through her clothing senses her flesh, warm and malleable, underneath. He thinks he hears Scully catch her breath and he runs his hands over her again, pulling her hip in to meet his.

They connect with the first ball and the thrill he always feels hitting that piece of horsehide is nothing compared to the thrill he feels with Scully in his arms. He is talking, still talking, and can't seem to stop; Scully's presence, her smell, her weight, sending his brain into overdrive, and he is thinking of everything and nothing: of how loud his breathing sounds in his ears; of her hands on his; of how crazy they must seem, playing baseball at night; of life, the universe - hell, everything, as ball after ball flies toward them.

"Shut up, Mulder. I'm playing baseball," she says, and at last he does.

They hit balls into the sky for what feels like hours, and what he tells her is true: his everyday, nagging concerns are gone; his worry over the X Files, colonisation, his sister, have all disappeared. Nothing exists now except him, Scully and the endless sky. And the thwack of ball on bat has become their first song; this turning and connecting, this hips before hands, their first dance.

At last, when the balls run out and their hands ache from hitting ball after ball, they stand in silence, his arms still wrapped round her, watching the stars overhead.

It seems like the heavens are, for once, on his side as the first star shoots across the sky, trailing a path for others that follow first in ones, then twos, and then in tens, it seems; hundreds. Lighting the universe. He feels her breath change as she utters a wish, too quietly for him to hear, and he pulls her momentarily closer.

"Some birthday present, huh, Scully?"

"You surpassed yourself, Mulder," she replies and now there is no sarcasm in her voice; it is soft and gentle, and more than he had dared hope for.

She turns in his arms and meets his eyes. In them he sees all that he has felt, is feeling himself. He sees fear and contentment, apprehension and love. She raises her head, eyes still staring into his, and he lowers his mouth to meet hers. Their lips touch and part, touch again and the taste of her tongue on his feels like a dusty, somehow comfortable basement office; days spent in rental cars on the open road; Saturday afternoons and non-fat-tofutti-ice-dreamsicles. It feels like coming home.

This, he thinks, this moment is all that he wants; standing here, with Scully in his arms, under a dancing sky.

****

Now, the night sky burns. Poised on the edge of this new world, they are faced with ruin and devastation. Of course they had expected something like this, but each, in their hearts, had hoped that which was inevitable could become that which would change. That fate, at the final moment, would have a change of heart.

Before them, cities flame. A host of stars shoot across the sky, leaving the universe blank and lightless, and while they may wish on these stars until the breath drains from their bodies, these wishes will not be granted.

He turns to her and cups her face in his hands. He feels her smooth breath on his lips and his soul aches for all she has come through, for him.

"The darkness always finds us Mulder," she says; the devastation in her voice is unmistakable and it tears his soul in two. "Wherever we go, whatever we do it's there. I've felt it coming for so long, and now it's here."

"I've felt it too," he replies, his words a whisper half buried beneath the roar of the world. "And I know it feels like it's hopeless, Scully, but there has to be another way. We will fight on, we will not be defeated. And while the darkness might keep on coming it will never take us; just let it try."

He turns and faces the ruined world. Battles have been lost and won on the expanse of land before him and will be lost and won long after he is gone. What is torn down can be rebuilt and he knows (how he knows) the strength that humans can find within themselves to carry on when it seems like all hope is gone.

The darkness is always coming, but he - they - will always fight it. With her by his side there is always hope.


End file.
